Fright Night Challenge 11: Don’t Breathe

Don’t Breathe is one of those movies that would make my friend Elsa hit things. Or possibly shout or cry. And possibly all those things at the same time. It is the story of what happens when three poor friends decide to rob a house belonging to a veteran blinded by shrapnel. As can be expected in a situation like this, the man is more than meets the eye.

The horror elements are very effective and the gimmick of having to be quiet enough to regulate your breathing at all times worked really well for me. I also really liked the fact that it was a human nemesis. There wasn’t much gore and what there was, was entirely manageable. That’s about all the good things that can be said. And the rest will be spoilery. Suffice it to say if you have an aversion to sexual abuse and/or disability-as-monstrous tropes, avoid this movie like the plague. If you don’t have a problem with the use of these things, it’s worth watching once for the gimmick.

The blind man is depicted as animalistic, monstrous even, mostly as a result of his blindness. There’s forced impregnation as a form of torture, but the man has the temerity to insist he’s not a rapist because he never put his dick in her. And judging by the result, I think the writers and the director believed that. That scene is also depicted in a lot more detail, one might even say lovingly, than any other scene in the movie. Given these two things, I doubt I’ll be returning to this movie, hoping instead to find one that uses a similar gimmick without these lazy, hackneyed tropes.